Texas SBOE Rejects Charter School Bid By Out-of-State Corporate Network.
American Federal of Teachers-Texas Branch
http://www.texasaft.org/
TEXAS AFT LEGISLATIVE HOTLINE
MONDAY, JULY 20, 2015
State Board of Education Rejects Charter Bid by Out-of-State Corporate Network
The State Board of Education on July 17 vetoed a charter application that would have allowed an out-of-state, corporate charter network to expand in the Dallas area. The application to enroll up to 7,500 pupils in Dallas charter campuses as part of the Idaho-based Athlos Academies network had been okayed by Commissioner of Education Michael Williams, and it prevailed by a three-to-two margin on July 16 in the SBOE committee on school initiatives, as reported in a previous Hotline. But the vote against the Athlos proposal when the full Board took up the issue on July 17 was not even close. The margin against the proposal was 12 to two.
The SBOE decision on Athlos was not based on any animus toward charter schools in general. Five other applicants won approval from the State Board as the Athlos proposal was rejected. The veto of the Athlos bid came as more and more questions piled up about the corporate network’s business model, which would have had the state-approved Athlos charter campuses in Dallas leasing facilities and purchasing curriculum from other Athlos corporate affiliates. The Athlos application also did not reflect much engagement with the Dallas community. Information about Athlos provided to State Board members by Texas AFT legislative counsel Patty Quinzi and allies brought these concerns into sharp focus.
The decisive, bipartisan rejection of the Athlos charter proposal for the Dallas area sends a welcome message that the SBOE is not going to rubber-stamp out-of-state corporate charter applications. The 12 State Board members who voted for the motion by SBOE member Erika Beltran, D-Dallas, to veto the Athlos charter application were as follows:
Lawrence Allen, D-Houston
Donna Bahorich, R-Houston (SBOE chair)
Erika Beltran, D-Dallas
David Bradley, R-Beaumont
Ruben Cortez, D-Brownsville
Martha Dominguez, D-El Paso
Pat Hardy, R-Fort Worth
Sue Melton-Malone, R-Waco
Marisa Perez, D-San Antonio
Ken Mercer, R-San Antonio
Thomas Ratliff, R-Mount Pleasant (vice chair)
Marty Rowley, R-Amarillo
The two SBOE members who voted to uphold the commissioner’s okay of the Athlos bid were:
Barbara Cargill, R-The Woodlands
Geraldine Miller, R-Dallas
Absent on this vote was Tom Maynard, R-Florence.
The model of parental and local control of public education in a professional setting, has won out over the corporate business model of profit.
